Our World in Data presents the data and research to make progress against the world’s largest problems.
This blog post draws on data and resea

Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet

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2021-07-12 20:00:08

Our World in Data presents the data and research to make progress against the world’s largest problems. This blog post draws on data and research discussed in our entries on Food Prices, Hunger and Undernourishment and Micronutrient Deficiency.

A healthy diet is about much more than calories: we need a wide range of nutrient-dense foods to get all of the vitamins and minerals that are essential for good health. In this post I look at the costs of diets around the world. Healthy diets are expensive; more than four times the cost of a basic, calorie-sufficient one. This is true in every country in the world. As a result, three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, even if they spend most of their income on food.

Being able to eat a healthy, nutritious diet is one of our most basic human needs. Yet billions of people go without; they suffer from ‘hidden hunger’, micronutrient deficiencies such as too little iron, calcium, vitamin-A or iodine.

To understand the affordability of food across the world a team of researchers looked at the lowest-cost options to meet basic nutritional requirements.2 As part of this study for the FAO’s The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, Anna Herforth and colleagues asked the question: “what is the cheapest way to meet dietary requirements in each country?”.